happy mid-autumn festival/national day

As I was walking home from work today I saw this Chinese man who I often see walking his two dogs (one is a pomeranian and the other Pekinese). His dogs were all play-biting with each other and I started imaging a scenario in which I went over and said "ah, ni de xiao gou zhende ke'ai!" and then proceeded to have a little conversation in my head in Chinese as I made my way to my apartment.

I sometimes have to moments where I just really, really want to have a conversation with a Chinese person and go through the familiar exchange of, me: "anything-in-chinese", them: "oh you speak chinese! you speak so well," me: "nali, nali..." etc. Rather boring, really, but it has a familiarity to it that is soothing and used to be so much a part of my everyday life.

I think because it's fall (and I've finally got around to putting up my pictures from China in a collage on my wall) that I'm feeling nostalgic for the good PRofC. I realized that this time one year ago I would have been on a train back to Beijing from Nanjing, after having spent a crazy and fun filled long weekend in Shanghai (we had to take a train to Nanjing from Shanghai bc all the ticket back to Beijing from Shanghai were sold out because of (surprise!) the holiday day). And the sight that greeted us when we got back to Beijing was hundreds of thousands of people descending on Tiananmen Square to pay homage to... the ugly government buildings? Mao's mausoleum? The hugest public space in the world with a very sketchy history?

But enough with the memories. I know now that the main reason I am so nostalgic for China is not the country itself, but the people that shared the experience with me. Friends combined with an exciting new city and culture and language is the best possible mix. I think if I were to go back anytime soon I would be longing for a camaraderie that can't be recreated and best lives on in the moments captured by our cameras, or when we get together and retell stories. I feel so so lucky that all the elements were working in my favor last fall, and only hope that someday I can return to China to revisit acquaintances and see some places that I did not have time to discover. But in the meantime, We'll always have Beijing.